Mother To Son By Langston Hughes
“Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes
`The poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes is a poem about persevering. As the title suggests, this poem is a monologue in which a mother is divulging her heartfelt advice to her son. The tone, therefore is loving, yet serious and determined. The mother in the poem is giving her son advice about how he should never give up. She tells him, in essence, to “Keep on Keeping on” throughout the hardships of life. She does this through the telling of her own struggles and experiences she has and still is encountering, yet overcoming, in her life. She compares the days of her life to a worn, rugged staircase through the use of metaphor. In this comparison, she describes and suggests that life is a worn-out, splintered staircase with torn up boards and places with …show more content…
no carpet, so there is an empty, bare floor.
She means by this that she has been striving each day to move on through her life, reaching upwards to land on solid ground as she hurdles the hardships and difficulties along the way. The mother goes on to say that, in spite of this, she has “been a-climbin’ on, and reachin’ landin’s. This means that in spite of all of the obstacles in her life, she is still striving to “climb,” and “reach,” forward. She then tells her son never to turn back and not to give up due to the difficulties in life he may encounter. She wants him to try harder and keep on trying in spite of these difficulties just as she has. A final metaphor, which is an example of repetition in the poem, is used in the final line, “And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” This line is a repetition of line two. The mother here is telling her son that even though her life hasn’t been full of beauty, ease, or extravagant luxuries, she doesn’t resign herself to defeat. The line is written in one twenty-line stanza with lines two, seven, and twenty rhyming. There is no definite rhyme
scheme, although the poem does have a rhythm and fluidity. This poem made me feel appreciative of how mothers in general work hard to overcome difficulties in life and want better for their children, so it made me feel grateful for the love and determination of mothers, and for this reason I enjoyed reading this poem.
`The poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes is a poem about persevering. As the title suggests, this poem is a monologue in which a mother is divulging her heartfelt advice to her son. The tone, therefore is loving, yet serious and determined. The mother in the poem is giving her son advice about how he should never give up. She tells him, in essence, to “Keep on Keeping on” throughout the hardships of life. She does this through the telling of her own struggles and experiences she has and still is encountering, yet overcoming, in her life. She compares the days of her life to a worn, rugged staircase through the use of metaphor. In this comparison, she describes and suggests that life is a worn-out, splintered staircase with torn up boards and places with …show more content…
no carpet, so there is an empty, bare floor.
She means by this that she has been striving each day to move on through her life, reaching upwards to land on solid ground as she hurdles the hardships and difficulties along the way. The mother goes on to say that, in spite of this, she has “been a-climbin’ on, and reachin’ landin’s. This means that in spite of all of the obstacles in her life, she is still striving to “climb,” and “reach,” forward. She then tells her son never to turn back and not to give up due to the difficulties in life he may encounter. She wants him to try harder and keep on trying in spite of these difficulties just as she has. A final metaphor, which is an example of repetition in the poem, is used in the final line, “And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” This line is a repetition of line two. The mother here is telling her son that even though her life hasn’t been full of beauty, ease, or extravagant luxuries, she doesn’t resign herself to defeat. The line is written in one twenty-line stanza with lines two, seven, and twenty rhyming. There is no definite rhyme
scheme, although the poem does have a rhythm and fluidity. This poem made me feel appreciative of how mothers in general work hard to overcome difficulties in life and want better for their children, so it made me feel grateful for the love and determination of mothers, and for this reason I enjoyed reading this poem.